Dawson skirted the mass of the crowd and made his way onto the bank. It was carpeted with litter, much of it plastic bottles discarded without a second’s thought after the contained water had been drunk. The rest of the junk included boxes, tin cans, abandoned clothing, trash bags, pieces of machinery, old tires, coconut husks, and unidentifiable bits of metal and plastic detritus. There was also the kind of human waste Dawson definitely did not want his shoes to touch, some of it exposed, some of it in “flying toilets”-tossed black plastic bags with excrement inside.
The impossibly good-looking Detective Sergeant Chikata, Dawson’s junior in rank in the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) Homicide Division, looked up as Dawson approached.
“Morning, Dawson.”
“Morning, Chikata.”
“Body of a dead male spotted in there this morning.”
“How did we get notified?”
Chikata introduced the bulky, flinty-eyed man next to him. “This is Inspector Agyekum. He was the Korle Bu station officer this morning.”
Agyekum was Detective Inspector Dawson’s rank equivalent, but as a general inspector he wore the standard, heavy, sweltering dark blue uniform of the Ghana Police Service (GPS) in contrast to CID’s plainclothesmen.
“Morning, Inspector.” Dawson shook hands, finishing with the customary mutual finger snap.
“I was starting my shift when a small boy came into the station,” Agyekum took up. “That’s him there with Constable Gyamfi.” He pointed his chin farther along the bank where a police constable stood over a boy of about eight sitting on the ground with his head down and his arms folded tightly across his skinny body.
“Many people saw the body,” Agyekum continued, “but because they fear the police, they just kept quiet. But the boy took it upon himself to run over to the Korle Bu station to report it.”
“He’s a brave young man,” Dawson said, looking over at the boy with approval. “And then?”
“Constable Gyamfi took the report in the station and brought it to me,” Agyekum said, “then the two of us returned with the boy. When I saw the body there, I decided to call the Crime Scene Unit.”
“Very good,” Dawson said. “Thank you.”
Dawson knew Police Constable Gyamfi from a previous case a year ago. He waved at the constable, who smiled and half waved, half saluted in return.
“Mr. Bright says he’s quite sure it’s a homicide,” Chikata said.
“Then it probably is,” Dawson said.
Deputy Superintendent Bright, a trained serologist, was head of the CSU team. His hunches were seldom wrong.
Dawson moved a little closer to the water, which was the color of tar and almost the same consistency. He winced at its relentless stench, but people living within smelling distance were used to it, or maybe just ignored it.